“Then listen,” he pleaded.
“What I have not heard is that you do not love me.”
He went very still.
“I have been suffering and alone and believing I am a failure as a wife and as your Queen because you stay away from me as though I am a disease. And then today it quite suddenly occurred to me that perhaps there is another reason. A better reason. Perhaps you stay away from me because you care for me. Perhaps you stay away because you love me.”
She stepped closer. “Do you love me?”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“Do you love me?”
He shook his head. “I cannot . . . we cannot . . . this conversation is not . . .”
She watched him with raised brows.
“I cannot do this,” he said.
She would not stand for that. “Do you love me?”
“I never intended to marry,” he said, shaking his head. “I never wanted to—”
“Do you love me?”
She was relentless. She had to be.
“Charlotte, please stop.” But his face was a picture of heartbreak. Maybe his heart had to be broken so that she could put it back together.
“Is it that you do not believe that I could love you?” she asked. “Because I do. I love you, George. I love you so much that I will do as you wish.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a hand and said, “If you do not love me.”
She felt the sudden need to move, to rock the baby growing within her, so she walked the few steps to the window and looked out. “All that you have to say is that you do not love me, and I will go.” She turned back around, her eyes meeting his with unflinching clarity. “I will go back to Buckingham House, and we can live our separate lives and I will have this baby alone and make do and fill my days and survive all on my own. I will do that. But first you have to say that you do not love me.”
And then: “You have to tell me that I am utterly alone in this world.”
His eyes searched hers. There was a heartbreaking tension to his body, as if he were afraid he’d shatter. Or maybe as if he was poised and coiled, preparing for escape. Finally, when the silence stretched taut, he said, “I am a madman. I am a danger.”
She shook her head.
“No. Listen. Inside my mind, there are other worlds creeping in. The heavens and the earth collide, and I do not know where I am.”
Charlotte asked the only question that mattered. “Do you love me?”
“That does not signify,” he said. “You do not wish a life with me for yourself. No one wishes that.”
She was so sick of men telling her what she wanted. Especially now, when her very heart was at stake. “George,” she implored, “I will stand with you between the heavens and the earth. I will tell you where you are.”
“Charlotte, you—”
“Do you love me?” she practically cried.
And there it was. She was begging. She had laid herself bare, given him her pride and her heart and everything she was, and—
“I love you.” The words sounded as if they’d been ripped from his soul. He’d been holding this back, denying his own heart. She could see it in his eyes as they filled with tears.
“George,” she whispered.
“No, let me finish. From the moment I saw you trying to go over the wall, I have loved you desperately. I cannot breathe when you are not near. I love you, Charlotte.” He took her face in his hands. “My heart calls your name.”
His kiss was one of love, and hunger, and desperation. He kissed her as if he could not get close enough, as if he could never get close enough.
As if he would never let her go.
“I wanted to tell you,” he said. “I wanted you to know, but this madness has been my secret my entire life, this darkness is my burden. You bring the light.”
“George.” She looked up at him, at his beloved face, those dark brows, and the full lower lip he liked to bite when he was amused. She knew him, she realized. She knew the man he was inside, and if sometimes that man was submerged under tortured waters, she could help him rise to the surface. She would not leave his side.
“It is you and me,” she vowed. “We can do this. Together.”
Brimsley
Kew Palace
8 May 1762
Brimsley decided he rather liked living at Kew.
It was much more casual than Buckingham House, to whatever extent a royal residence could be called casual. He and Reynolds were treated like the most senior of servants, despite there being a butler and housekeeper. But most of all, Kew was delightful because the King and Queen were delightful—and delighted with each other.
The first few days were difficult, though. It took time for the King to recover from his ordeal. Brimsley would never profess to know much about medicine, but he did not understand how anyone might think that torturing the King would help set his mind at ease.
He was also beginning to realize the strain that Reynolds had been under, caring for the King while keeping all of this a secret. That first night, when the Queen had so magnificently dispatched Doctor Monro, Brimsley had tried to offer his assistance, but Reynolds was so used to bearing his burden alone, he found it difficult to accept help.
Once the furor had died down, and the King and Queen had retired for the night, Brimsley and Reynolds had gone for a walk and found themselves in the stables. It was raining lightly, and so they’d gone inside to keep dry. It didn’t smell as bad as Brimsley had feared; clearly the stable hands were excellent at whatever it was they had to do to keep the place fresh.
The two men found a place to sit, leaning against a bale of hay. Reynolds sighed. Brimsley did not think he had ever seen him so tired.
“Have I ever told you how I came by this job?” Reynolds said.
Brimsley tipped his head, letting the side of his forehead kiss against Reynolds’s shoulder. “I imagine you were marked from a young age for your unmatched unction and superciliousness.”
Reynolds gave him a little smirk, but there was a hint of good nature to it. “The King and I grew up together. I was His Majesty’s playmate. We fished and climbed trees and were boys together.”
Brimsley nodded. Reynolds had mentioned this. Not often; he tended to be circumspect about his background.
“I’m still not sure why the Palace allowed it,” Reynolds continued. “They were monstrously strict about who got to spend time with the princes and princesses. I suppose it was because my mother was a trusted maid and my father a palace goldsmith. And I was the right age. Our birthdays are just two months apart.”
“Who is the elder?” Brimsley asked.
“Me.” Reynolds gave him one of those smiles he loved so much. “Of course.”
“Of course.”
“There was no one else for him unless some foreign dignitary or prince came to visit, but those were always awkward affairs. Two little boys dressed in their ridiculous finest and ordered to be friends.”
“That does not sound as if it would go well.”
“No,” Reynolds mused, “it never did. Half the time they didn’t even speak the same language. So it was just me. Me and George. I still called him George then.”
“You don’t now?”
Reynolds gave him a look. “You know I don’t. And I certainly never did when anyone else was around when we were children.”
Brimsley chuckled. “No, I can imagine that would not have gone over well.”
“Of course I knew my station, but I liked Georgie. I liked him even when adults pushed me aside in their haste to bow and scrape to him.” Reynolds looked up and grinned. It was a sentimental sort of smile, with the barest hint of something sad.